Soundhalo could make rubbish cameraphone gig footage redundant

There is nothing worse than going to a gig and having to watch
it through the smartphone screen of the guy in front of you. The
Yeah Yeah Yeah's know this (and banned smartphone cameras from their latest tour), I know this,
you know this, we all know this. So don't do it.

An app launched today in beta -- soundhalo -- might just convince
you to hold off on blocking the views of others by offering
downloads of high-quality gig footage straight to your phone as the
gig is actually happening.

It's being premiered at Brixton Academy tonight and tomorrow for
two shows by hip young hitmakers Alt-J, winners of the latest
Mercury Music Prize. Video and audio feeds at the venue will stream
to soundhalo's database -- as soon as each track finishes, it'll
appear in the app for download.

The app itself is free, but each song costs money to purchase.
For that money, though, you get both a MP4 video recording of the
song being performed that's better quality than anything you'll
have been able to take by yourself, and you can also get a seperate
audio track, so it's a kind of official bootleg live album as
well.

Gus Unger-Hamilton from Alt-J said:
"I think the future of music and technology as an artist, and
looking at how artists and fans interact, is really exciting.
Artistic output no longer has to be be dictated by the things it
used to be. It used to be how much music can you fit on a vinyl
record? And how long is a video cassette? Now that no longer has to
be the case."

Purchases sync across all devices as well, so even if you can't
get reception in the venue you'll be able to get home and find it
waiting for you, DRM-free. A drawback is that it's only for Android
right now but we are told an iOS version is due in the coming
months.